Marie Biondolillo

Rex Profanity

To describe a thing accurately, he thought, you must know its trajectory. This is why he dropped everything he ever cared about.

He thought that if he did not tend it, and it still flourished, that it must be true. But the only thing that ever lived in his garden was morning glory, and the only actions he ever performed were based on fear of consequences.

So he thought he was a morning glory and fear type of person, but actually, he was. He did not have to be, but he happened to be, because he did not try to become anything else.

So he built for himself a robe of morning glory and burrs, and swanned around in it, shouting “I am the only realistic person who ever thought, lived, or felt! Pale before me, for I am you.”

Then he was upset because no one liked his art. So he wove strands of grass into it, saying, look, I have varied myself. I have become more complicated. Are my complications lovable? I cannot speak to you until I have told you all about myself.

But the breadmakers and cobblers of his town disdained this, and so he built a castle out of morning glory and copper, and it burned him, and to him the burns said, I am real, because suffering is the most real thing, because it is the thing that always remains, when I am not trying to avoid it. Only the unavoidable is real.

And no one wanted to go inside of his castle, because it was muggy inside, but he said, You are afraid of the truth. No, they said, I am just avoiding your castle. You will never avoid my castle, he replied.

And then he built a tin army, to make it true. He made everyone work in his copper castle, for tin soldiers, and he said, How fortunate they are that I care so much about them – I do not allow anyone to live in ignorance. I am the epitome of reason.